High School Grid Preview: Norwich plays at Sidney Saturday

Norwich returns to action after a two-week absence when it travels to Sidney Saturday. In case you missed it, the game was moved from Friday night to the 1:30 p.m. weekend time. In lieu of an admission charge, fans are asked to donate cleaning supplies at the gate to support those impacted by severe flood damage.

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At UV-Edmeston, if you have a 2011 schedule, the home games all list Friday night games. All of those games were moved to Saturday afternoon, said first-year head coach Brian Banks. With the school on tight purse strings, the decision to play exclusively day games was made to save on the costs of lighting the field for night games.

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Speaking of the Storm, Coach Banks said he has seven players not practicing this week due to injury. The injury bug has nipped at the Storm every week this season, and after a physical game with Oxford on Monday, it got a little worse.

One thing that isn’t hurting is the Storm’s special teams play. On back-to-back weeks, UV-E returned kickoffs for touchdowns. “We’re not practicing special teams any more than normal, and we only work on it one day a week in practice,” Banks said. “A lot of it is pure athleticism by our guys back there. Those guys know where to make cuts, and Kody (Homann) is football savvy.”

On to this week’s matchups in which three of our six local teams are playing division games:

Windsor (0-2) at UV-Edmeston (0-2), Saturday, 1:30 p.m.

Windsor sufferd an overtime loss to Dryden on Monday. The Black Knights led most of their game, but gave up a tying touchdown late in the fourth quarter, and the winning touchdown came on Dryden’s first play of OT. Ismai’l Griffin had the lone TD for Windsor, while Marino Hogan was the top rusher. “It’s difficult to gauge Windsor right now,” Banks said. “We planned to go over and scout them, but their game was rescheduled on the same day we played Oxford.

“We played them a lot when I was at Walton, and I was familiar with what they did back then. It’s not the same anymore. I heard they like to mix it up more.”